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Don't let New York pass go with stop-and-frisk

Updated:
08/14/2013 12:22:54 PM EDT

Being physically present in New York City makes you a suspect, a potential criminal. The city's "stop-and-frisk" policy allows police to check on anyone with only the vaguest hint of probable cause - or, in too many cases, without.

The policy got bounced in a federal court this week, but not for the foremost of reasons. The judge's ruling indicated that the way the policy was being carried out violated the constitutional rights of minority citizens.

It is true that walking, or standing, or just existing as a black of Hispanic individual - particularly a man - makes it far more likely that the policy is going to come into play. Statistical studies showed that nearly 90 percent of those stopped under the policy in 2011 and 2012 were black or Hispanic.

Our louder argument against the policy is that 4.4 million people have been stopped since the policy's inception in 2002. And of those stopped, 6 percent of them were found to be unjustified stops.

Six percent? Doesn't sound so bad, until you start crunching the numbers. It means that in the past 11 years in New York City, 264,000 people were stopped from pursuing their legitimate business, by government officers, for no reason.

If we allow for 2013 as a full year (the numbers will only get worse), that's 24,000 people a year - 66 a day - who run afoul of a totalitarian-flavored policy.

The determination of unjustified stops was made by Dr. Jeffrey Fagan, a criminologist at Columbia Law School retained by the federal government to perform the statistical analyses.

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The city's experts, hired to critique Fagan's work, argued that a determination of a rate of 6 percent unjustified stops failed to show that the N.Y.P.D. had a policy of stopping people without reasonable suspicion that they might be doing something illegal, or preparing to.

Stop.

Review the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, the one that assures Americans - all Americans - will be secure in themselves and their property from search and seizure without probably cause.

There's no allowance for 6 percent of the population to be precluded from Fourth Amendment protection. That, in itself, should render the policy unconstitutional and kick it to the curb.

Add the blatant racial bias, and there's a second glaring reason to make the policy a part of history.

City officials defended the racial bias by noting that 83 percent of its known criminals are black or Hispanic. There are even more deep-seated problems at work if that is the case, but we are making our argument based on the individual rights of all Americans, not the collective wrongs done to those of any given skin pigmentation or the social implications of crime rates by race.

This policy is another example of overexaggerated reaction to the 9/11 attacks - and they are legion. New York City was hit, and hard, and a year later, this policy was in place. No coincidences.

Liberty can be a bloody thing; that's the price of a free society. The cost of making it potentially less so, with increased nvolvement of the government in citizens' lives, is too high to bear if we wish to retain the standards by which we were founded and under which we are all equally protected (reportedly, allegedly, maybe).

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who could teach Mary Poppins a thing or two about being a nanny, defended the practice and vowed to appeal.

He said the judge "ignored the real-world realities of crime." Bloomberg, however, ignored the real-world realities of the Constitution, of individual rights and of how latter considerations trump those of the former - again, it's part of the price of freedom we were once willing to pay. One of these days we'd like to see that we are willing, once again, to pay it, in defiance of those who would take it.

If there is reasonable suspicion that an individual is in the process of committing a crime; if he fits a reasonable description of a known, wanted criminal; if he is reported or seen by law enforcement to be acting in a manner that a reasonable person would consider suspicious, then by all means, allow law enforcement to act on its roles to serve and protect. Mistakes can still be made, but we believe they will occur much less often than with such a policy as "stop and frisk" in place.

It's likely the Supremes will get their chance to sing about this particular case; Bloomberg isn't one to give up on his incessant battle to protect his people from everything.

Ignoring the rights of even one person is a reason to fight. When it comes to minorities, the individual is the smallest minority of all and deserving of equal protection. Doing so a quarter-million times in the course of a decade, well, it makes our minds up for us quickly and convincingly.

John Cassidy wrote a detailed piece for The New Yorker, which provided some of the material for this piece. Find it in full at www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/08/scheindlin-stop-and-frisk-verdict-new-york-statistical-debate.html.